f 

^^s 




JNr''^R 'ITY BULLETIN 

Published by the I^ouisiana State University and ^gr; wural and Mechanical College at 

Baton Rouge. Issued Monthly' except No- (her and December. 
Entered December 22, 1909, at Baton Rouge,' La , as se..,iiClTclass matter, under Act of Con- 
gress of July 16, 1894. 

Vol. 11— N. S. OCTOBER, 1911. No. 10 



Early Trade and Travel in the Lower 
Mississippi Valley 



BY 

WILLIAM O. SCROGGS, Ph. D. 

'Professor of Economics and History in Louisiana State Univeraity 



Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley 
Historical Association, Vol, 11, 1909 



ORXLIEJS'S PRINXrNG HOU8B 
BATON ROUOK 



n 



5/. 




EAELY TEADE AND TEAVEL IN THE LOWEE 
MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 

By "William 0. Scroggs 

To give anything like a full and accurate picture of 
the travel and traffic in the lower Mississippi Valley be- 
fore the nineteenth century is impossible. Traders rarely 
made records of their goings and comings, and it is only 
occasionally that we catch glimpses of adventurers 
threading their way from Virginia through the gaps of 
the Alleghanies or pushing out from Carolina around the 
southern foot of the Appalachian range in the direction 
of the Father of Waters. Mr. Eoosevelt in his Winning 
of the West states that ''at the outbreak of the Eevolu- 
tion they [the Americans] still all dwelt on the seaboard, 
either on the coast itself or along the banks of the streams 
flowing into the Atlantic. When the fight at Lexington 
took place they had no settlements beyond the mountain 
chain on our western border. It had taken them over a 
century and a half to spread from the Atlantic to the 
Alleghanies. ' ' ^ He thus intimates that the line of Eng- 
lish settlements did not pass beyond the mountains until 
after the Colonies had achieved their independence. To 
this, the traditional view, however, Professor Edward 
Channing has recently opposed a flat denial by declaring 
that from 1713 to 1754 ''the English occupation of the 
country from the Gulf to the Ohio and between the Alle- 
ghanies and the Mississippi is . . . difficult to trace, but it 
was none the less effective."^ 

Investigation shows that the Alleghanies did not en- 
tirely confine the English to the seaboard before the Eev- 

1 Edition of 1900, Pt. I, p. 37. 

2 Channing 's History of the United States, Vol. II, p. 550. 



olution. Before the middle of the eighteenth century 
English explorers and traders in the lower Mississippi 
basin were nuinerons, and a few adventurous pioneers had 
even dared to build their homos in this region. The first 
ex])loration from the Virginia coast beyond the Blue 
Ridge, of which there is any record, was made in 1671 by 
General A brain "Wood. Acting under orders from Gov- 
ernor Berkeley to determine whether the westward-flow- 
ing rivers entered the South Sea, he reached the Alle- 
ghanies, found a stream which proved to be the largest 
tributary' of the Kanawha, and returned home firm in the 
belief that he had been very near the Pacific.^ 

Other Governors of Virginia also displayed a great 
amount of interest in the western country. In a letter to 
the Lords of Trade, dated December 15, 1710, Governor 
Spotswood urged that the English should move up the 
James River, cross the mountains, and separate the 
French in Canada from those in Louisiana. In tlie au- 
tumn of this year the Governor sent out a party of ex- 
plorers, who found the mountains about one hundred 
miles from the upper inhabitants and ascended one of the 
highest ridges on horseback. On their retura, says the 
Governor, ''they assured me that the descent on the other 
side seemed to be as easy as that they had passed on this, 
and that they could have passed over the whole Ledge 
(which is not large) if the season of the year had not been 
too far advanced."* Six years later the Governor him- 
self and a party of friends crossed the Blue Ridge and 
made a reconnaissance of the Shenandoah Valley, halting 
on the crest of the ridge to fire a few volleys of musketry 
and drink the health of the king and the royal family in 
champagne. Burgundy, and claret. It is very interesting 



'Johnston's First Explorations of Kentucky, in the Filson Club 
Publications, No. 13, p. vii. 

< Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood, Vol. I, p. 40, published as 
Vol. I of tho Collections of the I'irginia Historical Society. 



to note that on descending the western slope of the moun- 
tain they followed trees which had formerly been blazed, 
and consequently they were not the first travelers in the 
region/ 

There is considerable evidence that by 1750 traders 
had for years been crossing the AUeghanies. The explor- 
er La Salle, as he descended the Mississippi Eiver in 
1682, came to the conclusion that the English were even 
then crossing the mountains and disposing of their wares 
to Indians along the river, for he could account in no 
other way for the numerous articles of European make 
which he found among the savages. The Frenchman even 
thought of closing the mountain passes in order to keep 
the English out of the Mississippi Valley.® It was not, 
however, until 1748 that any concerted effort was made 
for actual settlement in this region from Virginia. In 
this year Thomas Lee, Lawrence and Augustine Wash- 
ington, and others from Virginia and Maryland formed 
an association known as the Ohio Company and received 
a grant of a large tract of land between the Monongahela 
and Kanawha rivers, with the object of planting settle- 
ments and trading with the Indians. In the following 
year the company sent out Christopher Gist to explore 
the country, and he was occupied with this work until 
1752. After completing his explorations, Gist was or- 
dered to lay off a town and a fort at Shurtee's Creek on 
the east of the Ohio, a little below the present Pittsburgh. 
Gist then settled in the Monongahela Valley near the pro- 
posed town and was soon joined by eleven other families. 
In the meantime the Ohio Company had built a store- 
house at Will's Creek (the present Cumberland, Mary- 
land) and a road had been surveyed from this post to the 
mouth of the Monongahela River. Will's Creek was the 



5 An account of this expedition is contained in the Journal of John 
Fontaine. 

6 See Winsor 's Mississippi Basin, p. 48. 



centre of a nourishing trade with the western Indians/ 
In 1749 the Loyal Land Comixiuy received from the 
Virginia assembly a grant of 8UU,00U acres west of the 
mountains in what is now the State of Kentucky. In the 
spring of 1750 the company sent Dr. Thomas Walker 
across the mountains through the Cumberland Gap to 
explore the grant and note the lands suitable for settle- 
ment. This was not Walker's first trip; he had been as 
far as the Holston River in 1748, and mentions his meet- 
ing in that year with a man named Staluaker on his way 
to the Cherokee Indians.** On his second journey AValker 
also met with evidences of the white man's movement 
in this region, in the fonn of trees blazed and cut with 
initials.** At some point on the upper waters of the 
Cumberland River Walker built a house, and it is prob- 
able that he lived there for a number of years, as the 
dwelling is indicated on various maps of the period.'" 

Washington in his Journal, compiled during his 
tramp with Gist to the Ohio Valley in 1753, speaks of a 
Mr. Frazier's, at the mouth of Turtle Creek, on the 
Monougahela River. He also mentions Gist's new settle- 
ment, which, he says, *'is west north-west seventy miles 
from Will's Creek", and states that during his journey 
he met an Indian trader named Brown and four French 
deserters on their way to Philadelphia. The face of the 
white man, then, was not such a rare sight in the western 
wilderness as has sometimes been supposed. Logan, in 
his History of Ujjper South Carolina, tells us that in 
]758 one Anthony Park traveled several hundred miles 

7 Gist's Journal may be found in Johnston's First Explorations of 
Kentucky in the Filson Club Publications, No. 13. For an account of his 
sottlement, see Lowdermilk 's History of Cumberland, p. 28, and Sparks 'a 
lAfc of Washington, Vol. I, p. 26. 

"Johnston's First Explorations of Kentucky, in tho Filson Club 
Publications, No. 1.3, p. 42. 

"Johnston's First Explorations of Kentucky, in tho Filyon Club 
Publications, No. I'A, p. 54. 

'« Channing's History of the Vnited States, Vol. II, ]>. ."j-OH. 



west of the mountains and found there several white men 
who had lived among the Indians for twenty years, a 
few who had been in the region from forty to fifty years, 
and one who had been there sixty years. There is also 
a story of a Virginia trader named Daugherty who made 
his abode among the western Indians for the purposes 
of traffic as early as 1690." 

It was in South Carolina, however, that western trade 
reached its fullest development. Many of the early Car- 
olina fortunes were gained through this traffic with the 
Indians, and many of the most prominent men in the Col- 
ony were at one time engaged in this business.^^ From 
Charleston westward to the Mississippi there was an al- 
most level route and a comparatively dense Indian pop- 
ulation with which to barter .^^ A map of North America, 
published by Dr. John Mitchell in 1755, and perhaps the 
most elaborate and accurate map of the country pub- 
lished during the colonial period, contains the statement 
that ''The English have factories and settlements in all 
the towns of the Creek Indians of any note, except Al- 
bamas; which was usurped by the French in 1715 but 
established by the English 28 years before." This of 
course means that English traders were on the Alabama 
Eiver as early as 1687; that is, within seventeen years 
after the founding of Charleston, and fully twelve years 
before French settlers had landed on the Gulf coast. 

In fact, it was the aggressiveness of the English in 
pushing out toward the Southwest that caused Louis 
XIV to renew the efforts at colonizing the lower Missis- 



11 Logan's History of Upper South Carolina, p. 168. 

12 McCrady 's South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, pp. 
345-347, and South Carolina under the Royal Government, p. 270. 

13 Descriptions of the traders' trails to tlie Southwest may be found 
in Logan's History of Upper South Carolina and in a monograph by Peter 
J. Hamilton in the Transactions of the Alabama Historical Society, Vol. 
II, p. 41. An interesting description at first hand of these routes as they 
appeared in 1776 is given by William Bartram in his Travels, p. 306. 



sipiii Valley, whioli had been so suddenly interrupted by 
the death of La Salle.'' Two years before the sailing of 
Iberville, Remonville, in a memoir addressed to Count 
de Pontchartrain, called attention to the English designs 
on the Mississippi, knowledge of which he had obtained 
from merchants trading with England.'" At the very 
moment when Iberville was exploring the lower Mississip- 
pi, Edward Randolph, that much-hated emissary of the 
English government, while at Charleston wrote to the 
Lords of Trade, under the date of March 16, 1699, that 
he had talked with a member of the Governor's Council, 
a great Indian trader, who had been six hundred miles 
west of Charleston, and who was willing to undertake 
the exploration of the Mississippi and to "find out the 
mouth and the true latitude thereof", **if his Majesty will 
please to pay the charge, w^h will not be above £400 or 
£500 at most".'* Six days later, in another letter, he 
mentions the fact that Colonel James Moore had crossed 
the **Apalathean" mountains for inland discovery and 
the Indian trade. The news that a French expedition 
was headed for the Mississippi had already reached 
Charleston, he said, and had created much uneasiness 
among the Carolinians.'^ 

Mitchell's map, referred to above, gives the route of 
a certain Colonel Welch to the Mississippi in 1698 and 
says that it was afterwards followed by other traders. 
This claim, that the English had reached the Mississippi 

'••"Seule une prompte intervention de la France pouvait empecher 
1 'Angleterre de s 'api)roprier tout le fruit des dficouvcrtes de La Salle. ' ' — 
Heinrich 's La Louisianc sous la Compagnie des Indes, p. xxviii. 

"•French's Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida (new 
series, 1869), pp. 1-10. Further indication of French anxiety as to the 
desifjns of the English upon the Mississippi is discovered in a letter of the 
Minister of Marine, Aug. 27, 1698. — See Margry'i Memoires et Docu- 
ments, Vol. IV, p. 82. 

'« Rivers 's South Carolina, App., p. 445. 

>T Collections of the Historical Society of South Carolina, Vol. I, 
p. 208. 



from Carolina before the French had made their settle- 
ments on the Gulf, may be verified from French sources. 
In May, 1699, Bienville found the natives in a village on 
the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain greatly disturbed 
because two days before they had been attacked by a 
party of Chickasaws led by two white men calling them- 
selves Englichi/^ These were evidently Carolina tra- 
ders. Some months later Bienville reports that ' ' several 
Englishmen from Carolina are among the Chickasaws, 
where they trade in peltry and slaves". He says that 
these traders ascend a river to its headwaters and from 
there transport their goods by horses to the Chickasaw 
villages. It is his purpose, he says, to capture the traders 
by drawing them away from the Chickasaws on the pre- 
text of commerce, but that he would not dare interfere 
with them in the presence of these Indians, who might 
thereby lose their friendship for the French.^® 

In this same year Le Sueur and Penicaut went up 
the Mississippi prospecting for minerals, and on the Ar- 
kansas Eiver, eight leagues above its mouth, they found 
an English trader, who, says Penicaut, ''gave us much 
assistance with his provisions, as our supply was nearly 
exhausted. " ^" Le Sueur asked the trader who sent him 
there; he replied that he was sent by the Governor of 
Carolina, and showed the Frenchmen a passport from 
that official, who, he said, was the master of the river.^^ 
French sources, therefore, seem to verify the statement 
of John Archdale, Governor of Carolina from 1694 to 
1696, that "Charlestown trades near one thousand miles 
into the continent. ' ' ^^ 

The fear of the French that the English would reap 



18 La Harpe 's Journal Eistorique, pp. 14, 15. 
isMargry's Memoires et Documents, Vol. IV, p, 361. 
20 French's Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida (New 
series, 1869), p. 63. 

2iMargry'8 Memoires et Documents, Vol. V, p. 402. 

22 Carroll 'a Historical Collections of South Carolina, Vol. II, p. 97. 



the fniits of La Salle's discovery was not groundless; 
they not only found English traders among the natives, 
but in September, 1699, Bienville actually met an Eng- 
lish frigate in the ^lississippi River, twenty-eight 
leagues above its mouth, at a point which, from the fact 
that the ship turned back, is called the English Turn, 
or Bend, to this day." According to La Harpe, it was the 
enterprise of the English on the Mississippi that led Iber- 
ville to establish his post on this river in 1700." 

It was in the English traders that French Colonial 
schemes in the lower Mississippi Valley encountered an 
insurmountable obstacle. Sometimes by presents, some- 
times by threats, and more particularly by the abundance, 
quality, and cheapness of their merchandise, adven- 
turers from Carolina and Virginia kept the greater part 
of the savages friendly to themselves and consequently 
more or less hostile to the French, and thus accomplished 
in the South results similar to those achieved by the 
British with the Iroquois in the North. In the Southern 
debatable land there were four great tribes or nations. 
The northernmost, and the most civilized, were the Chero- 
kees, occupying mainly the territory included in the 
present State of Tennessee ; below them, between the Mis- 
sissippi and Tombigbee rivers, and as far south as 
the Yazoo, lived the Chickasaws, reputed to be unusually 
brave and warlike. The Chickasaws had for their neigh- 
bors the Creeks on the east and the Choctaws on the 
south. The French seem to have had no difficulty in 
winning the Choctaws over to their side, and for a time 
they also counted the Chickasaws among their friends.*' 

28Margry'8 Mimoires et Documents, Vol. IV, p. 361; La Harpe 'b 
Journal Uistorique, pp. 19, 20; French's Historical Collections of Louisiana 
and Florida (New series, 1869), p. 59. These various aecounta differ in 
details, hut all agree that the Englishman turned back and left the French 
in jiossession of the river. 

2< La Harpe 's Journal Ilistori<iuc, p. 25. 

28 La Harpe 's Journal Uistorique, p. 80. 



But if we may believe French accounts it was not long be- 
fore English traders set these two nations against each 
other, with the result that the Chickasaws became favora- 
ble to the English, while the Choctaws, as a rule, remain- 
ed the friends of the French as long as the later held the 
country. Penicaut and La Harpe tell us that the ill-feel- 
ing between Choctaws and Chickasaws began in 1705, 
when the latter sold to English traders as slaves several 
Choctaw families that were visiting them; and if this 
statement is correct the traders committed a blunder very 
similar in its ultimate results to that committed by 
Champlain in the North a century bef ore.^^ 

Whatever was the real cause of the Choctaw ani- 
mosity, it is certain that the English could gain admission 
into the villages of this nation only at rare intervals, 
while at the same time they possessed the friendship of 
the Cherokees, Chickasaws, and, to a less degree, of the 
Creeks. After 1706 the English seem to have exerted 
every effort to gain the good will of the Choctaws, being 
lavish in promises and presents, and Bienville had to 
work hard to retain their loyalty. The French were es- 
pecially concerned with regard to the Choctaws during 
Queen Anne's War, when there were rumors of prepara- 
tions for an English attack on Mobile and of intrigues 
with the Choctaws for active aid or at least for permis- 
sion to pass through their country." These Indians, how- 
ever, remained true to the French, and Louisianst came 
through the war unscathed, although the English could 
have taken it at any time. For some time before the close 
of this war the aggressiveness of the Carolinians in the 
Southwest was checked by a rising of the Tuscaroras and 
neighboring tribes; but with the return of peace the 
routes to the interior were again clear, and the English 



26 French 's Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida (New 
series, 1869), p. 97; La Harpe 's Journal Historigue, pp. 89-95. 

27 Heinrich 's La Louisiane sous la Compagnie des Indes, p. liii. 



10 

traders resumed their efforts to win all the natives. They 
set up factories among the Chickasaws, set the Natchez 
and the Illinois to lighting against each other, so as to 
purchase their captives as slaves, and even entered the 
territory of the Alibamons (a portion of the Creek na- 
tion), where the French had just erected Fort Toulouse. 
Even the Choctaws finally yielded to their blandishments 
and admitted the English into some of their villages ; and 
the traders, when ordered by Cadillac to leave, sent back 
word that they were not afraid of him and his forty or 
fifty French knaves. In despair the Governor declared 
that he preferred open war to a peace so full of treach- 
ery." 

The English conquest, which Louisiana had escaped 
during the war, seemed now on the point of being accom- 
plished in time of peace. The activity of the traders was, 
indeed, remarkable. In 1714 Penicaut made a trip to the 
Natchez country and was greatly astonished to find there 
three Englishmen, who, he says, had come to buy slaves." 
La Harpe also says that there were at this time a dozen 
Englishmen among the Choctaws.^" In 1715 Bienville 
wrote to Pontchartrain that three English officers were 
among the Choctaws with a large body of other Indians, 
and that they were bent on destroying villages which per- 
sisted in their loyalty to the French. Later he declared 
that there was a rumor upon the upper Mississippi that 
the Governor of Carolina was distributing presents among 
the savages to induce them to break French heads at Mo- 



28 Heinrich 's La Louisiane sous la Compagnie des Indes, p. Ixix. 

29MargTy'8 Memoires ct Documents, Vol. V, p. 505; French's His- 
torical Collections of LouisiaTia and Florida (New series, 1869), pp. 123- 
126; La Hairpe's Journal Historique, pp. 115-118. These accounts contain 
a very interesting story of the pursuit down the Mississippi and the final 
capture of one of these Englishmen, whom Penicaut calls " Mylord Master 
You. ' ' 

80 La Harpe 's Journal Historique, p. 115. 



11 

bile.^^ We are told that in this year Bienville took meas- 
ures to break up the English trade on the Mississippi, and 
that he heard of massacres of English traders ; ^^ but how 
far his actions were responsible for the massacres can- 
not be determined. It is probable that the massacres 
referred to had some connection with the great Indian 
revolt known in Carolina as the Yamasee War, which be- 
gan in April, 1715. English aggressiveness was then at 
its height from the Lakes to the Gulf. The traders, intox- 
icated by their success, began to cheat, seize property for 
pretended debts, and charge exorbitant prices. Their 
brutality aroused the deepest resentment among the 
Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Yamasees, and other 
tribes ; Spanish intrigue in Florida, and perhaps to some 
extent French influence in Louisiana also, fanned the 
flame. The English traders scattered among these va- 
rious tribes were put to death, often with great torture ; 
Carolina was overrun by savages, and its population took 
refuge in Charleston.^* 

The Indian uprising, coming at so opportune a mo- 
ment for preventing the English conquest of Louisiana, 
served to cast a suspicion upon the French of having 
aided and abetted the movement ; but whatever may have 
been their desire, the Louisiana colonists were in no con- 
dition to give any really effective aid to the savages.** 

31 Heinrich's La Louisiane sous la Compagnie des Indes, pp. Ixix, Ixx. 

32 French 's Historical Collections of Louisiana and Florida (New 
series, 1869), p. 129. 

33 McCrady 's South Carrolina under the Proprietary Government , p. 
353; Heinrieh. 's La Louisiane sous la Compagnie des Indes, p. Ixxi. 

34 It is a fact worthy of note, however, that the French traders did 
not incur the resentment of the savages during these troubles. In one of 
the Chickasaw villages, for instance, there were fifteen English traders and 
a Frenchman occupying the same cabin. The Indians suddenly rose and 
slew the English, but their chief ordered the Frenchman to stand at his 
side and fear nothing. Shortly afterwards, however, two young warriors 
mistook the white man for an Englishman and slew him, "to the great 
regret of the whole nation." — La Harpe's Journal Historique, p. 120. 



12 

The insurrection had two results. The French, profiting 
as much as possible by the troubles of the Carolinians, 
sought to clear the Mississippi of the English, and in 
1716 built Fort Rosalie at the site of the present Natchez. 
The Carolina proprietors, at the same time, perceiving 
the necessit)^ of a more effective control over both Indians 
and traders, and tempted also by the enormous profits 
of the trade, had an act passed in 1716 giving the propri- 
etary government the entire control of the traffic, which 
thus became a public monopoly. The trade had previous- 
ly been conducted by private enterprise. In 1719, how- 
ever, owing to complaints from the London merchants of 
the monopolistic nature of the trade, the act was re- 
pealed." About 1717, with the return of peace and quiet 
in Carolina, the western routes were reopened and Louisi- 
ana was again menaced with English invasion. 

L';fipinay, the new Governor, knowing nothing of the 
Indian character, had disappointed the savages by not 
distributing the usual presents, and the English were not 
slow to take advantage of this blunder. The Indian chiefs 
grumbled mightily at L'fipinay 's niggardliness, and called 
him such things as an old woman who never went from 
home and a mangy dog sent over by the great French 
chief because he was dying of hunger in his own village." 
At this time Sir Robert Montgomery received a grant 
of a portion of Carolina south of the Savannah River, to be 
known as Azilia, and had settlements been planted in 
this region as contemplated, Louisiana would have been 
further endangered. Fortunately for the French, how- 
ever, Carolina was again disturbed by Indian troubles, 
followed by a revolution which overthrew the proprietary 
government, and the colony was consequently too busily 

88 Logan 'a History of Upper South Carolina, ch. X; McCrady'§ 
South Carolina under the Proprietary Government, p. 629. 

*«Heinrich'8 La Louisiane sous la Compagnie des Indes, p. 142. 



13 

absorbed with domestic affairs to maintain its aggressive 
policy toward its western neighbor. 

The fear of the French on the Mississippi was given 
as one of the reasons why the people of Carolina desired 
to be under the protection of the British Crown; and 
whether this fear was real or feigned, the colonists by va- 
rious means made such an impression upon the Lords of 
Trade that they instructed Francis Nicholson, the first 
royal Governor, to make special efforts to regain the 
friendship of the Indians. Accordingly, with the estab- 
lishment of royal government in Carolina, we find the 
English more aggressive in the Southwest than ever 
before.^^ Unlicensed persons were prohibited from trad- 
ing with the Indians.^^ The Cherokees and the Creeks 
were each summoned to a great council, at which Governor 
Nicholson made them presents, marked the boundaries of 
their lands, regulated weights and measures, appointed an 
agent to look after the affairs of each nation, and had 
both to choose a head chief to deal directly with the Gov- 
emor.^^ In 1730 Sir Alexander Cuming arrived in South 
Carolina, and at a great meeting of the Cherokee chiefs 
secured an acknowledgment of their allegiance to the 
British Crown. Later he carried seven of the chiefs to 
London, where a treaty was drawn up stipulating that 
the great king had ordered his children in Carolina to 
' 'trade with the Indians, and furnish them with all man- 
ner of goods they want, and to make haste to build houses 
and plant corn from Charlestown, towards the towns of 
the Cherokees behind the great mountains." The Cher- 
okees, on their part, were to ' ' take care to keep the trad- 
ing path clean, that there be no blood on the path where 
the English tread, even though they should be accompa- 

37 Heinrich 's La Louisiane sous la Compagnie des Indes, p. 152. 

38 McCrady 's Sauth Carolina under the Royal Government, p. 38. 

39 Carroll 's Historical Collections of South Carolina, Vol. I, pp. 258, 
272, 278. 



14 

nied with other people with whom the Cherokees may be 
at war: That the Cherokees shall not suffer their people 
to trade with any other nation but the English, nor per- 
mit white men of any other nation to build any forts or 
cabins, or plant any corn among them." The Indians 
also agreed to return the fugitive slaves of the planters, 
and for every slave returned were to receive a reward 
in the form of a gun and a watch coat/° 

The renewed activity of the English in the South- 
west was noted by Charlevoix on his journey down the 
Mississippi in 1721. He declares that the Chickasaws are 
angered at the French for allying themselves with the 
Illinois, and that the English of Carolina are striving to 
increase the resentment. Two Frenchmen following 
Charlevoix were slain by Chickasaws as soon as they left 
the Illinois country.*^ On reaching Biloxi in 1722 he 
hears of an English interloper there named Marshall, 
who had considerable dealings with the French ; and dur- 
ing his stay there a Choctaw chief came to Bienville and 
declared that the English were making his people great 
promises and trying to induce them to have no more trade 
with the French.*^ 

Wliile the English were thus making headway, the 
French were almost idle. In 1712 Crozat had received a 
monopoly of the trade of Louisiana; in 1717 practically 
the same privileges were conferred upon the Company 
of the West, which two years later was transformed into 
the Company of the Indies. The trade with the Indians 
was entirely in the hands of the company, which fixed 
arbitrarily the prices at which its goods were to be sold 
and the prices to be paid for the furs of the natives. 
Carolina traders, unfettered by such restrictions, could 

«> Carroll 'b Historical Collections of South Carolina, Vol. I, p. 278. 

*' Charlevoix's Journal d'un Voyage dans rAmerique Septentrionale, 
Vol. Ill, p. 257. 

<* Charlevoii 's Journal d'un Voyage dans I'Amerique Septentrionale, 
Vol. IIT, p. 483. 



15 

easily undersell their competitors. The personal qualities 
of the French should undoubtedly have given them an ad- 
vantage in bartering with the natives ; the savage was as 
much attracted by the affability and adaptability of the 
Frenchman as he was repelled by the hauteur of the 
Briton.*^ But in the long run, as a means of gaining the 
friendship of the aborigines, French manners proved far 
less effective than English merchandise. Under the 
regime of the Company of the Indies the French officials 
were continually hampered by a dearth of goods, and 
much of the stock sent by the company was so old that 
the savages did not care for it.** The Lords of Trade in 
1721 declared that the French could never compete with 
the English in furnishing the Indians with European 
commodities at honest and reasonable prices,*^ and Char- 
levoix himself at the same time stated that the English 



*3 The Lords of Trade, in a. memorial to the king in 1721, called 
attention to the great advantage which the French in America possessed 
through their intermarriage with the natives, "whereby their new Empire 
may be peopled without draining France of its inhabitants", and recom- 
mended that the British colonial Governors should be instructed to encour- 
age such intermarriage in their provinces ! — See Documents Relating to 
the Colonial History of the State of New York, Vol. V, p. 626. 

The French seem to have been fully aware of their personal advantage 
ovecr the English in dealing with the natives. - Charlevoix in his Journal 
d'un Voyage dans I'Amerique Septentrionale, Vol. Ill, p. 80, says: "Les 
Anglois Ameriquains ne veulent point de Guerre, parce qu'ils ont beaucoup 
a perdrej ils ne menagent point les Sauvages parce qu'ils ne croyent en 
avoir besoin. La Jeunesse Frangoise, par des raisons contraires, deteste la 
Paix, et vit bien avec les Naturels du Pays, dont elle s 'attire aisement 
I'estime pendant la Guerre, et I'amitie en tout tems. " 

Baudry des Lozieres, in his Second Voyage a la Louisiane, Vol. I, 
p. 397, says: "J'ai dit que les sauvages ont un penchant naturel pour 
les Frangais, et je le tiens d'eux-memes j 'ai meme entendu dire a ceux qui 
ont des relations commerciales avec les North-Americains, qu'ils y tenaient 
ainsi aux Anglais, sous le seul point de vue d'interet. " 

4*Heinrieh's La Louisiane sous, la Compagnie des Indes, p. 208. 

45 Documents Belating to the Colonial History of the State of New 
YorTc, Vol. V, p. 626. 



16 

were selling the savages goods cheaper than were the 
French/" 

Governor Spotswood of Virginia wrote in 1719 that the 
Indians with whom the English traded ''have hitherto 
been kept in our interest by being more plentifully sup- 
plied with goods than the French could afford them"," 
and in the following year we find the Alibamons com- 
plaining that the French do not pay them as much for 
their peltry as they receive from Carolina traders, and 
also that French goods are sold to them at an advance 
over English prices." In the middle of the eighteenth 
century Governor Glen of South Carolina declared that 
the tranquillity of his province depended on the retention 
of the Indians in the British interest, and that this would 
be impossible without a continuation of trafiSc with them 
in the articles for which there was the greatest demand — 
''both arms and amunition, as well as Cloaths and other 
necessaries." *' 

English traders, therefore, gained to their side all 
the great tribes of the lower Mississippi Valley except 
the Choctaws ; and the latter were frequently so wavering 
in their allegiance to the French as to become to them a 
source of great anxiety. As their general defection would 
have meant ruin to the Colony, Bienville, in order to 
keep them loyal, once or twice found it necessar}^ to fo- 
ment a war between them and those stanch friends of 
the English, the Chickasaws."^" Unfortunately, Bienville 
was recalled to France just when his services were most 



■•0 Chaj-levoix 's Journal d'un Voyage dans I'Amerique Septentrionale, 
Vol. Ill, p. 257. 

<7 Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood, Vol. II, p. 331 (Collec- 
tions of the Virginia Uixtorical Society, Vol. II). 

<8La Haq>e'8 Journal Historique, p. 228. 

*» Carroll's Historical Collections of South Carolina, Vol. IT, pp. 
245, 246. 

80 Ileinrich 's La Louisiane sous la Compagnie des Indes, pp. 152, 
]fi3, 164. 



17 

needed, as he alone of the French officials seemed cap- 
able of counteracting English influences. The Company 
of the Indies pursued a niggardly policy; presents for 
the Indians and soldiers for the forts cost money, and 
it was cheaper to send missionaries, who were indeed the 
keenest rivals of the British trader/^ "While the English 
were most aggressive, French depots were empty, and 
Perier called in vain for goods. When he asked for 
troops to strike a sudden blow and intimidate the English 
and their allies, he was accused of seeking to enhance his 
own reputation at the expense of the Company.''^ 

Who then, during this period, were the real masters 
of the lower Mississippi Valley? According to good mod- 
ern French authority, the English traders in 1728 had 
almost reached the point where with a word they could 
have turned nearly the whole Indian population against 
the French.^^ In Louisiana, indeed, there were forts and 
soldiers and towns, so that technically the Company of 
the Indies held possession of the territory for France; 
but an examination of the character of these forts, gar- 
risons, and settlements shows that the Company's hold 
upon its vast domain was pitifully weak. All of the forts 
were unfinished; the guns were unmounted; and the 
pieces were sometimes of one calibre and the balls of 
another. The soldiers were fit inmates of such posts. 



51 One of these missionaries, the Jesuit De Guyenne, went as far east 
in the direction of the English settlements in 1726 as the Chattahoochee 
River, and built a cabin in the Indian village of Coweta, within the limits 
of the present State of Georgia. Later the English showed their fear of 
his influence by persuading the Indians to bum his cabin and drive him 
back to Toulouse. — See Hamilton 's Colonial Mobile, p. 158. 

There is also evidence of French attempts to extend their influence 
into Georgia as late as 1750, when one Daniel Clark, a trader, reported 
that on reaching "Cowetaw Town" he found the French colors set up 
in the square and the whole town "taken up in entertaining" officers 
and soldiers from Fort Toulouse. — See Georgia Colonial Records, Vol. 
VI, p. 341. 

szHeinrich's La Louisiane sous la Compagnie des Tndes, p. 227. 

53 Heinrich 's La Louisiane sous la Compagnie des Indes, p. 225. 



18 

Few in numbers, poorly amiecl, almost naked, usually 
fed on scant rations of rice and maize, quartered in miser- 
able huts covered with bark, sleeping on the damp ground 
and thereby becoming afflicted with various distempers, 
they soon lost what little capacity for military service 
they once might have had. Desertions were frequent, 
the Carolina settlements offering a safe retreat." To 
cap the climax, tlie Natchez Indians, always more or less 
troublesome, rose in revolt in November, 1729, and wiped 
out the settlement at Fort Rosalie, one of the most pros- 
perous in the Colony. The French planned a summary 
vengeance, but were never able fully to carry it out. Most 
of the Natchez finally took refuge among the enemies of 
France, the Chickasaws; and the failure of the French 
to exact full reparation lost them the respect of many of 
their Indian allies. The Natchez massacre was followed 
by a severe drought, which almost destroyed the crops. 
The Company was discouraged, and its colonists all 
seemed animated with one single desire — to get out of 
the country. 

On the English side at this time there was unusual 
prosperity." In October, 1729, there were said to have 
been' one hundred and twenty packhorses with English 
goods among the Choctaws alone, and in the following 
year was negotiated the important treaty of alliance with 



5* In 1721 the entire garrison at Fort Toulouse mutinied on account 
of lack of food and with arms and baggage took the road to Carolina. 
One of the officers escaped to the Indians, and with theLr aid ambushed the 
mutineers and killed or captured the whole i)arty. — La Harpe's Journal 
Eistorique, pp. 261, 348. 

66 The years 1721-1743 were the most prosperous period for the 
trade in peltry. In 1748 the value of beaver and deer-skins exported from 
Charleston amounted to about $300,000 of our present money, and up to 
this time only one other Carolina export (rice) had exceeded the value of 
the skins sent to Europe. — See Carroll's Historical Collections of South 
Carolina, Vol. II, p. 234; McCrady's South Carolina under the Proprietary 
Government, pp. 345, 346; and McCrady's South Carolina under the Royal 
Government, p. 270. 



19 

the Cherokees, already described. Between the spiritless 
colonists of Louisiana and the traders from Carolina there 
was a striking contrast. The latter cleared no fields, 
sowed no crops, and built no towns in the lower Missis- 
sippi Valley; but their supplies of gew-gaws, firearms, 
and fire water won them the favor of the savage, and their 
physical prowess and expert markmanship inspired his 
respect. The trader was often something more than a 
mere higgler; frequently he was a man of superior in- 
telligence. Unlike the English settler, who usually re- 
garded the Indian as a pest to be extermined as soon as 
possible, and whose advent often filled the savage with 
dismay, because it meant the restriction of his hunting- 
grounds, the trader was welcomed by the natives; for 
his arrival meant the satisfaction of their primitive 
wants. 

The predominating influence of the English over the 
native population in this region before 1755 was due 
mainly to the activity of the trader, but it was perhaps 
enhanced by the lack of land-hungry Anglo-Saxon pio- 
neers. It should be borne in mind, however, that the pres- 
ence of the trader among the aborigines was by no means 
an unmixed blessing; in fact, he was everywhere the 
source of debauching and demoralizing influence. The 
Indian acquired from him all the vices and none of the 
virtues of the white man, and suffered as much injury 
from the pampering of the trafficker as he did later from 
the crowding of the settler. 

In January, 1731, the Company of the Indies came to 
the conclusion that its policy in Louisiana had been a 
failure and surrendered its holdings to the French 
Crown. The royal government at once set itself to work 
to improve matters in the Colony and sent over soldiers 
and supplies ; but the Company's policy had given Louisi- 
ana such a bad name at home that it was for a long time 
a difficult matter to induce colonists to emigrate. In the 



20 

meantime English influence in the Southwest had been 
greatly strengthened through the founding of Georgia 
and the treaties made by Oglethorpe with the western 
Indians. In July, 1732, to the great joy of the colonists, 
Bienville was again made Governor of Louisiana, and in 
December he sailed with supplies and soldiers, and with 
instructions to expel the Chickasaws from French terri- 
tory*, to regain the good will of the Choctaws, and to pre- 
vent all trade between the Indians and outsiders. He 
was instructed to check English encroachments by peace- 
ful measures, such as the resumption of trade and the 
despatching of interpreters to the principal posts." Bien- 
ville's slender resources, however, were entirely inade- 
quate for the great work confronting him. There was 
no cessation in the activity of the English; on the con- 
trary, while the province of Louisiana was languishing, 
Virginia and Carolina were receiving constant accessions 
of immigrants, who pushed farther and farther into the 
western woods. 

The new Governor finally perceived that there could 
be no hope of peace in Louisiana until he drove out or 
subdued the troublesome Chickasaws, and that a prompt 
and decisive blow was needed to regain even the respect 
of the copper-hued allies of the French. In 1736, there- 
fore, he organized an expedition against the Chickasaws, 
and advanced beyond Tombecbe, where he found the ene- 
my strongly fortified in several villages. Over one of 
these the English colors were flying, and English trad- 
ers were also seen preparing the savages to meet the ai^ 
tack." It requires no wild flight of the imagination to see 
in these intrigues and hostilities in the southern forests 
the preliminaries of the great struggle for a continent 
which began twenty years later. Bienville's war on the 
Chickasaws was a miserable failure, and though a peace 



BO Hoinrich's Jm Louisiane smus la Compaf/nie dt.s Indcs. jip. 276, 277. 
07 Baudry de» Lozi^ree 'b Voyage d la Louisiane, pp. 60, 61. 



21 

was patched up with them in 1740 they continued their 
depredations. The rivalry for the mastery of the south- 
ern back country continued until England and France 
resolved to decide the question by the wager of battle. 

In the long straggle that followed Louisiana re- 
mained in constant dread of an English attack which 
never came. The very weakness of the Colony was to it 
perhaps a source of protection; for the energies of the 
English were devoted to the reduction of the more men- 
acing French establishments in the North. Neverthe- 
less, when the treaty of peace was signed in Paris, in 
]763, the region from the Ohio to the Gulf and between 
the Alleghanies and the Mississippi came into the posses- 
sion of that people who had already controlled it in a 
commercial way for half a century. But the country was 
not to be definitely won without a struggle with the na- 
tives. French intrigue and English blunders during the 
war precipitated an uprising of the Creeks and Cherokees 
which it required two years to subdue.^^ Even after the 
treaty of peace an English officer who spent some time 
among the Cherokees declared that he found them still in 
sympathy with the French and reconciled to the rule of 
the English only through the advantages of their trade.°® 

In view of the fact that English influence in the low- 
er Mississippi Valley was for such a long period in the 
ascendant, the question naturally arises why the southern 
English colonists did not follow the example of their 
brothers in New England and attempt to complete the 
conquest of French territory during Queen Anne's and 
King George's wars. The answer may be given, I think, 
in a few words. The southern Colonies were never men- 
aced by the feeble settlements in Louisiana as were their 
northern neighbors by the feudal military organization 

58McCrady's South Carolina under the Boyal Government, pp. 302- 
304. 

BSWinsor's Mississippi Basin, pp. 411, 412. 



22 

of New France. It was the Spaniard in Florida rather 
than the Frenchman in Louisiana whom the Georgians 
and Carolinians dreaded. Again, the Indians with whom 
the French in the South intrigued were milder than those 
in the North, and their incursions were not so greatly 
feared. Lastly, the religious fanaticism — the hatred of 
English Puritan for French Catholic — so manifest in 
New England, was lacking in the South. 

The general feeling of the southern colonists toward 
their neighbors in the West seems to have been well ex- 
pressed by Governor Glen, when he wrote: ''If ever the 
French settlements on the Mississippi grow great, they 
may have pernicious effects upon South Carolina, be- 
cause they produce the same kind of commodities as are 
produced there, viz. : Rice and Indigo ; but hitherto the 
only inconvenience that I know of is their attempting to 
withdraw our Indians from us, and attacking those who 
are most attached to our interest. . . . It is easy for 
me at present to divert the French in their own way, and 
to fmd them business for double the number of men they 
have in that country." °° From a military invasion of 
Louisiana, even if it had been entirely practicable, the 
southern colonists would have had nothing to gain; a com- 
mercial conquest they had already achieved. 

80 Carroll's llistorical Collections of South Carolina, Vol. II, p. 247. 



_.xg, wv-nools and Coilegeb. 
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to the degree of Bachelor of Laws. 

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leading to a certificate. 

8 . Graduate courses of one or two years leading to the degrees 
of Master of Arts, Master of Science, Civil Engineer, 
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offers instruction of collegiate grade in academic, profes- 
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For catalogue and other information, address, 

THOMAS D. BOYD, A. M., LL. D., 

Presidenl. 



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